THE IMPORTANCE OF SEA POWER
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR]
SIR,—Mr. W. T. Wells' excellent letter shows that there are still Englishmen who believe in Sea Power and who are not hypnotised by the Air Scare. He says that "while recent events have impaired our capacity to make Germany feel the effect of a blockade in a short time, in the long run blockade still remains a weapon of potency."
The "run," however, would not be very "long." Added territory brings added people to be fed and to revolt if not fed. Even in the picnic advance into Austria, the Germans ran out of petrol and of horses and had actually to use oxen for their transport, and that without any blockade. Where would their tanks and their gallon-a-minute aeroplanes have got their petrol under a blockade ? Of what are their soldiers' boots and clothes and equipment made ?
In the last War Germany had all the countries she now has, plus Servia and Roumania and Turkey, and for some time Syria and Palestine. Yet as soon as we stopped feeding and supplying Germany through the neutrals, under the fatal Declaration of London, the war was over in a few months. With the instant and rigid cargo-control we should now impose; still fewer months would be needed.—Yours faithfully, GEOFFREY BOWLES.
25 Catherine Place, S.W. r.
Previous page
